If a person suffers from a urinary incontinence, for example, if a person suffers from a stress urinary incontinence, then urine leakage can be caused by application of abdominal pressure during normal exercise or by laughing, coughing, sneezing or the like. The cause of this may be, for example, that the pelvic floor muscle which is a muscle for supporting the urethra is loosened by birth or the like.
For the treatment of urinary incontinence, a surgical treatment is effective, in which there is used, for example, a tape-shaped (elongated) implant called “sling.” The sling is indwelled inside the body and the urethra is supported by the sling (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2010-99499). In order to indwell the sling inside the body, an operator would incise the vagina with a surgical knife, dissect the biological tissue between the urethra and the vagina, and make the dissected region and the outside communicate with each other using a puncture needle via an obturator foramen of a pelvis, forming a puncture hole. Then, by use of such a puncture hole, the sling is indwelled into the body.
If the vagina is incised once, however, a situation may occur that the sling is exposed to the inside of the vagina from a wound caused by the incision of the vagina, and complications may be caused by an infection from the wound or the like. Further, since the vagina is incised, there can be such a defect that the invasion is relatively great and the burden on the patient is relatively heavy. Further, the urethra may be damaged by a surgical knife in the course of the procedure by the operator. In addition, the fingertip of the operator may be damaged or injured by a surgical knife.
In addition, for example, for indwelling the sling in a predetermined orientation, the biological tissue must be dissected in a width much greater than the width of the sling, which can lead to a relatively heavy burden on the patient.